Sideron and Cupido: Two untold lives at Hampton Court Palace

In 1795, two remarkable men, Guan Anthony Sideron and William Frederik Cupido, arrived at Hampton Court Palace in the entourage of  the Dutch William V, Prince of Orange. Born in the Caribbean and Africa respectively, Sideron and Cupido had been enslaved as children and given to the Prince as 'gifts'. They now accompanied him as he fled a French invasion – finding safety in George III’s palaces in England.

Sideron and Cupido’s lives were brutally disrupted by violence, colonialism, enslavement and war. But they overcame this to leave a legacy of their lives and identities for the future, and records of their impact on the people, times and places, amongst which they lived and worked. 

Here, Mishka Sinha, Curator of Inclusive History, explores these two little-known life stories that connect Hampton Court with the wider Georgian world and European empires.

Who were Sideron and Cupido?

Guan Anthony Sideron was born in 1756 in Curaçao, the Caribbean headquarters of the Dutch West India Company. His parents may have been enslaved Africans who worked on a plantation; Curaçao’s main economic importance for the Dutch was as a distribution centre for enslaved Africans. 

Sideron was taken from his family and home aged 7, and shipped as a ‘gift’ to the Netherlands, for the Prince of Orange. He arrived in 1763 in a cold, damp, unfamiliar country. 

William Frederik Cupido arrived in 1766, the year that the Prince was formally made Stadholder of the Dutch Provinces. Cupido was not his birth name, but the one we know him by. He was born somewhere in Africa. We do not know when he was taken from his home, but we know he was enslaved and brought to Fort St. George, Elmina (now in Ghana), the headquarters of the Dutch West India Company. 

Cupido would likely have been locked in the basement with hundreds of other enslaved Africans, waiting for unknown fates and destined to be sold to European ships to feed an insatiable trade. The manager of the fort may have sent Cupido as a gift to win favour with William; the Prince would join the West India Company’s Board, and become Governor-in-chief of the Dutch West and East India Companies (WIC and VOC). 

Life at court

There was a long tradition of African ‘servants’ at European courts, such as Jean Rabo (ca. 1715–1769), who had been valet to William IV of England. ‘Gifts’ of young, enslaved Africans were much prized amongst European royalty.  

Sideron and Cupido were more fortunate than most enslaved people at this time. The Prince and his older sister Carolina had previously each been sent such ‘gifts’, but they disappeared from the record, and may have died. By the time they were grown men, Sideron and Cupido occupied privileged posts, given responsible positions within the Prince’s household and were paid respectable salaries. 

Before coming to England, Sideron and Cupido accompanied William V around the Dutch country for the celebrations of his installation as Stadholder, and appear in several documents and paintings. They were a visual representation of a European court’s overseas power, trade and imperial ambitions. 

William’s court was a place of many material comforts and global luxuries, which servants also had access to, and Sideron and Cupido would have experienced. There were foods such as coffee, sugar, chocolate and tea, drawn from international trade and enslaved or colonial labour.

Sideron and Cupido were also given dancing lessons, usually reserved for elite children, probably so they could entertain William. Both boys were dressed in expensive livery, including turbans with red, white, and blue plumes - the Dutch tricolour.

Promotion

Sideron and Cupido rose through the ranks of court servants to positions of trust and importance.  Their duties included supervising other – European – servants, and acting as minders and companions to William’s children. Both were made Personal Chamberlains in 1782. 

A letter dated 1794, from Sideron to William and the Stadholder’s committee, objecting to cutbacks, shows that the writer felt entitled to express his opinion, and challenge those in power. 

In 1795, Sideron and Cupido were amongst a select few from William’s household who accompanied him and his family to England. 

Britain and the world

By 1795, the Dutch had been invaded by Republican France, supported by factions opposed to the Stadholder. William and his household were given refuge in England by George III, who was cousin to William V and his wife Wilhelmina.

On arriving in England, William stayed briefly at Kew Palace. From here he wrote ‘the Kew Letters’, to Dutch colonial governors in South Africa, India and South East Asia, ordering them to surrender Dutch colonies to the British, for ‘safe-keeping’. 

While European powers fought each other, their territorial rivalries and jostling for global power continued to affect people, lives and livelihoods on the other side of the world. Cupido’s and Sideron’s presences in England were a trace and a reminder of these other lives and histories subject to decisions taken in distant courts and countries.

Life at Hampton Court

Hampton Court was no longer a royal residence. It was used primarily used to accommodate "Grace and Favour" residents, who had previously served the crown including  minor royals, aristocrats, military leaders, diplomats, and even gardeners. When William and his household arrived at the palace, George III granted them extensive apartments, ejecting several residents in the process.

Their rooms included the Duke of Cumberland’s Lodgings, surrounding apartments, and the State rooms overlooking Fountain Court. The Queen’s Guard and Presence Chambers — part of the Baroque palace created by William III and Mary II — were the Prince of Orange’s reception rooms. Here, Sideron and Cupido would have attended the Prince at public receptions, and in his private apartments.

What did Sideron and Cupido think of life at Hampton Court Palace? After the nerve-wracking events of the French invasion and their hurried escape to England, it must have been a relief to find themselves becalmed in a quiet palace.

But it may come to feel dull. There was none of the buzz and excitement of court life, and they lived in relative isolation with little to look forward to apart from occasional visits by George III from his palaces at Windsor or Kew.

Looking for Sideron and Cupido in England

We have found no certain records yet of Cupido or Sideron in Britain, and few details of the Prince of Orange’s stay. Amongst them are satirical prints by James Gillray, depicting the Prince as corpulent, sleepy, licentious, propped up by his pension from George III.

Back in 1793, Gillray accompanied the Duke of York to Flanders and drew a cartoon of the meeting of European heads and representatives: he put the Prince next to the Duke of York, with a crowd of musicians behind them – amongst them is a single Black person, wearing a turban. 

Black musicians were often present in European royal entourages, and depicted in paintings of European royalty – but they rarely appear in Gillray’s prints. Could this be clue that Cupido or Sideron went to Flanders with William? And could it be a trace of their presence in a British source? 

In mid-1795, William sent Cupido on a mission through the war-torn European continent to his estates in Oranienstein, in what is now Germany. Sideron remained in England with the Prince and his family. But the climate did not suit him. The Court of Orange had been well-heated with rich supplies of firewood, peat and coal. Was Hampton Court cold and damp by comparison? 

William sent Sideron on a paid holiday to recuperate in Scarborough, a seaside resort for the wealthy who came to recuperate from various illnesses by bathing in seawater – a favourite 18th-century remedy. Sideron felt better and went back to Hampton Court, but it was a temporary respite.

Life after England

In 1802 a temporary peace prevailed in Europe after the Treaty of Amiens. William and his household left England for Oranienstein and Sideron went with them. 

In 1803, Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick wrote to her brother, George III that the Prince of Orange was no longer in debt,  now had a pension from his brother in law, the King of Prussia. Augusta’s son, the hereditary Prince of Brunswick had married the Prince and Princess of Orange’s daughter, Princess Louise, whom Sideron and Cupido had played with and looked after as a child.

The Oranges visited their daughter at Brunswick from Oranienstein. Louise was glad to see her old playmates,  who came with her parents. Augusta wrote to George III that she expected William and to return in the winter of 1803, for ‘the Prince wishes it’.  

Return to the Netherlands

But by the winter of 1803, Sideron had died. His health had continued to decline during their stay in England, and he never fully recovered. 

Cupido survived Sideron by three years, during which he met and married a young German woman and had a daughter with her. Cupido and William V, Prince of Orange both died in 1806. 

The Prince’s family continued to support Cupido’s wife and daughter. When the House of Orange was restored to power in the Netherlands, the family returned there, and Cupido’s wife and daughter went with them. We know now that some of Cupido and his wife’s descendants still live in the Hague. 

Extraordinary stories of untold lives

Sideron and Cupido are unusual because we have records of their names, lives and even what they looked like, which have been rediscovered thanks to dedicated historians and researchers. 

These two men are also unusual because they survived being taken away from their families as children, enslaved, transported by ship and made to work in a foreign climate very far from home. They both survived to grow up and were fortunate in that they found conditions within which they could build careers, better their positions and live relatively full lives. For many enslaved people, including young children, who arrived in Europe from Africa and the Caribbean, this was not the case. 

Cupido’s and Sideron’s stories are significant for their own sakes, and for the richness of their histories, but they also remind us of the stories we do not know, of lives whose histories are lost, and of those who did not survive to be recorded by history.

Mishka Sinha
Curator for Inclusive History, Historic Royal Palaces

Suggested further reading

This piece is indebted to original research by Esther Schreuder; further details can be found in her book Cupido en Sideron: Twee Moren aan het hof van Oranje (2017), (English title: Cupido and Sideron: Two “Moors” at the Court of Orange), parts of which have been translated into English and can be found on her blog online.

Also see:

• James Gillray, The Orangerie, 1796, British Museum number 1868,0808.6550; Gillray, Pylades and Orestes, 1797, British Musuem number J,3.16
• Fatigues of the Campaign in Flanders, satirical print, museum number 1851,0901.652, James Gillray, 1793.
• Georgian Papers online, Augusta to George III
• Ernest Law, History of Hampton Court, vol. 3.(1890-98)
• Sarah Parker, Grace & Favour: a Handbook of Who Lived Where in Hampton Court Palace 1750 to 1950, 2005
•  J. Stockwell, “British Expansion and Rule in South-East Asia”, Oxford History of British Empire, Vol. III : The Nineteenth Century, Andrew Porter ed. (1999), 374.